Life With Bump: The Four Month Update

The four month update. If you read my last update in the ‘Life with Bump‘ series {click here to read it, if you haven’t}, you will know this is the first of my monthly updates. Having moved from fortnightly to monthly updates, it now seems like ages since I wrote about how Bump and I are getting on. There is loads to update you on but I promise I will try not to ramble too much.

Life For Bump

We can safely say that Bump is beginning to suffer ever so slightly with his teeth. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, ends up in his mouth. In fact I am beginning to wonder if his hands are going to be in his mouth forever!

The fact that we have discovered that things can go in our mouth now means we are dribbling pretty much all the time. I can’t quite believe how many bibs we are getting through as a result. I put a bib on him and within about 90 minutes it is soaked through. On average we go through about four-five tips a day. And this isn’t even the worse of it yet, that is all still to come!

In a nutshell until Bump is five years old we get sent a FREE book each month. By my calculations that is 60 free books for Bump! It is quite amazing and is a really cool idea. I am afraid not all people seem to be lucky enough to live in an area of the UK {or Canada or the USA} that participates in the scheme. Have a look here to see if you can sign your little one up.

I’d say that Bump is very excited about his first book. Of course he isn’t but I am sure in the years to come he will enjoy receiving a book every month. I will let you all know over on my Instagram feed what the first book we get is, so do keep an eye out!

Poorly Baby

I knew it wouldn’t be long before Bump experienced his first cold/tummy bug. In fact I had thought it would be when we came back from our trip to France given all the germs that get passed around in aircraft cabins. I was therefore feeling stupidly proud of myself when he didn’t pick up anything following the flight.

A couple of weeks later, however, I woke in the middle of night to hear Bump screaming the house down. I went into his nursery to discover that his stomach must have exploded given the amount of poo! I noticed that he was burning hot and did a quick thermometer check to find he was running a temperature. It was really odd because once I had cleared up the poo, he was as happy as Larry and chatting away to me despite the temperature. After a dose of Calpol I got him back to sleep, but that wasn’t the end of it, several more wakes that night left me {and probably him} feeling like a zombie.

In the morning more Calpol and his breakfast seemed to go down well, but unfortunately that didn’t last long. Up came his breakfast several times over the next few hours, including over W in the middle of Ikea. It was so hard to know what to do, as he can’t tell me whats wrong so it’s all guess-work. We had some really disturbed nights, several more vomit incidents {including over the carpet at someone elses house} and some rather nasty nappies.

Whilst at the time it felt like the bug was dragging on for ages, in reality it was only a couple of days. Of course, it will be no surprise to the seasoned mummies out there that within a couple of days I came down with a cold as well!

Sleeping Through

No one likes a mum who brags about how well their baby sleeps but a baby sleeping through is surely the holy grail for every new mum? We have been very lucky that Bump has always been an excellent sleeper. As regular readers will know, our nighttime routine involved a dream feed at about 10pm. Well this month we have dropped the dream feed.

There were a few blips but we have had a couple of nights 7pm-7am sleep. Boy did I feel good the next day! I felt glowing and had a bounce in my step on our daily walk.

Just when I allowed myself to think we had cracked the sleeping routine we went right back to square one. Over two consecutive we had 7 wake ups per night! I was like a walking zombie once again. The poor sleep was a combination of Bump’s dodgy tummy/cold and the after effect of his last set of injections.

I guess I have learnt the hard way. One has to take the sleep highs with the sleep lows. I certainly won’t be allowing myself to think that I have the sleep thing cracked anytime soon.

Life With Bump For Mummy

Cliché alert. I truly love being a mummy. There is no doubt that it was my calling in life. In fact, when a friend {with an incredibly successful career} admitted that all she really wanted to be was a mummy and a domestic goddess {a much better term that the horrid old-fashioned ‘housewife’}, I knew exactly where she was coming from. Don’t get me wrong, I love my career but right now I am loving being a mummy. It isn’t easy and I would never claim that. But, so far, Bump is a delight to have around. I am sure he is just saving it up for when he is older, terrible twos maybe?!

C-Section Recovery

This will be the last time I talk about my c-section recovery. The first eight weeks were tough but now I feel like I am fully recovered. The scar has certainly heeled really well. There are moments when I possibly do too much and I notice it the next day but my scar no longer stops me doing anything.

With the scar behaving itself I have started running again! W always says “the first run is always the hardest” I hope he is bloody well right. I am not sure I will manage to do the first Parkrun of 2018, as the lovely AdventureMama suggested to me, but I will be doing Parkrun and much more next year.

The running combined with my daily walks with Bump mean I finally feel like I am doing something proactive and my c-section is no longer a hinderance.

Starting a ‘régime’

Hmmmm…. yes well maybe the less said the better {hangs head in shame}. The weight loss hasn’t been going well at all. I blame rich French food from our time away this month! W and I though have decided, given that I am back doing proper exercise, now is the time to start a régime as our French friends say {it sounds much better than diet in my view!}.

Before I met W, I did Slimming World. I have to say it really worked for me and I lost three stone. Sadly that has all piled back on. I do still have lots of the recipe books and I am trying to reintroduce many of the principles. I therefore am keeping the house stocked with fruit for when I get hungry as it is, in Slimming World speak, sin free. We have also cut back on the amount of carbs that we are eating which has made us feel a lot better!

I am determined that I will lose the baby weight and more. Life is too short to not be happy with your body. We also need to set a great example to Bump as he grows, he needs to know what a healthy lifestyle gives you. I have set myself the rather daunting goal of losing three stone. And I want to do this before we start to think about having another baby!

Mummy and Daddy Time

We had a real treat the other week. Good friends of ours invited us to a charity black tie ball in nearby Reading. It was our first chance of a night out since Bump was born. The fact that the charity the ball was in add of, is one that W and I feel does excellent work in our local community really helped.

I won’t lie. The thought of leaving Bump to go out was daunting. W suggested we go the whole hog and rather than just leave Bump with family for a couple of hours, we ask a family member to look after Bump for the whole night! So that is what we did. We packed Bump off for his first ever sleep over.

Mummy guilt did kick in at the thought of Bump being without W or I for 15 or so hours. Before we said yes, I spoke to a couple of my friends from my ACF, to see what they would do. Within minutes I had a number of texts saying we should go for it and that I should stop feeling so guilty!

It was a great evening. It was lovely to get dressed up and have an evening with friends. What was even lovelier though, was seeing Bump the following morning.

Thinking about a nursery

As much as I love being a mummy and a domestic goddess, I will be going back to work. My reasoning for this is three-fold. Firstly, I need the intellectual challenge of work, secondly, I think Bump needs the opportunity to develop with other children his age on a fairly frequent basis and thirdly we could do with the extra dosh!

I fear that we are dreadfully behind the curve on selecting a nursery. It seems all my friends signed up to a nursery before their child was born. I am hoping that is just a London thing and the nurseries in West Berkshire aren’t quite so in demand.

I am going to do a proper post about nursery selection in due course but I felt it was worthy of a mention in this month’s update. Arranging nursery tours and discussing our options has dominated a lot of mine and W’s chats over the last couple of weeks. I posted about the decision on Instagram and I was relieved to know that I wasn’t the only person who has struggled with the concept of nursery. It is a tough decision but as the lovely Oatcakeadventures {real name Megan!} said to me, the anticipation of sending your child off to nursery is a lot worse than the reality. I am hoping that Megan is right and I won’t be regretting my decision.

The Stats

Age: 4 months

Length: 68 cm {At birth: 52cm}

Weight: 14lb 2oz {At birth: 8lbs 2}

Sleep: I don’t want to curse myself again so I am not saying anything given my comments above!

So that was the four month update. My aim is to really get the comments on my posts flowing. Can you all please help out by leaving a comment below. I’d love to get a real sense of community on my blog. I know you are all reading my posts, so please do comment. Also don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and Instagram. Until the next update my lovelies…

To give you the best possible experience, Birth of a Mummy uses cookies. Using this site means you agree to our use of cookies. We have published a new cookies policy, which you should read to find out about how we use cookies. View cookie policy.